


With Love

by BenevolentErrancy



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Anachronistic James Bond, Gen, Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 16:59:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7582417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenevolentErrancy/pseuds/BenevolentErrancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Illya watches a spy movie, Gaby is inspired, and Napoleon is an innocent bystander.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Love

Napoleon stares calmly across the room at Illya who meets his eyes evenly, face steady, professional, not betraying the fact that a moment ago Illya had sworn as loudly as Napoleon himself and had nearly tumbled backwards out of his chair in an effort to get his gun after a deafening explosion had rocked the room. Now you'd never think there was a chance he'd been at all ruffled.

The bastard.

He and Napoleon shared what could be generously called an office, or less generously called a broom closet. Gaby, it should be noted, was not forced to share their fate and had a nice little office of her own, admittedly smaller than theirs and near Waverly's (a downside, as far as Napoleon was concerned, one never wanted to be _too_ near the boss), but still it was her own, entirely free from ten foot long Russian legs trying to trip her up or any of those other little inconveniences that came with sharing space with another human being. Theirs, by contrast, was small and cramped even before shoving it full of office equipment, but then when you add two large men, one of said large men including the Red Peril who seemed to take his country's size as a personal challenge, things got... cozy. Waverly had promised them better accommodations once better accommodations become available but regrettably U.N.C.L.E. was still in her infancy and they had only a small office in London for the moment; naturally though Waverly had _plans_. In the meantime he and Illya made due, so two desks had been fit into the room, and though Napoleon suspected that Illya would fiercely prefer having his back to Napoleon the desks had been pressed together to give them both the maximum amount of work space. Ever one to sniff out a silver lining though, Napoleon took this entire set up as as a challenge to see how far he could push Illya's nerves.

This wasn't hard, not even taking his prodigious temper into account; Illya, as it turned out, took paperwork as seriously as he took fieldwork and was incredibly particular about being able to sit in silence and get it done. Napoleon had slightly more liberal (and less flattering) views of paperwork. So, in the interest of avoiding said paperwork as much as possible, he now had a non-exhaustive list of things that could get a rise out of Illya, which included but wasn't limitted to: Napoleon bringing pretty secretaries into their office to chat up, Napoleon putting his feet up on the desk (his own no less) and tipping his chair back and forth, bouncing his leg, reading his reports out loud under his breath, clicking his pen repeatedly (which has resulted in a total of two pens being thrown at Napoleon's head and one out the window, though the latter was one of the ones he'd lifted from Waverly's office so he wasn't concerned), and, his personal favourite, a game he thought of as The Cold War. After all, his and Illya's desks were pressed flush to each other which left a very thin crack between them dividing what was Napoleon's Space and Illya's Space, or as Napoleon liked to think of it: The Iron Curtain. His game simply involved see how much of Illya's deskspace he could encroach upon before being, generally violently, deported back to his own space. He could admit, at least to himself, that he took childish glee in flicking as many little agents – that is, paper darts – into Illya's space as he could before the might of the KGB retaliated in full force. No desks (or, for that matter, Americans, fortunately) had yet been thrown at any walls so Napoleon figured he was still safely tap-dancing on the knife edge.

 _Perhaps I may have miscalculated that though_ , he thought as he stared at the stone-faced Illya, ink slowly dripping off his own face. A drop slid down the length of his nose and dropped into the black puddle on his desk. Perhaps this was the retaliation.

“This is a different look for you, Cowboy,” Illya commented at length. Napoleon watched the small little muscles in Illya's cheek twitch in an effort to keep his expression neutral. “Is good one, you can see less of your face.”

Very delicately Napoleon put down his pen – or at least the twisted remains that had once been his pen – and, without breaking eye contact with Illya, plucked his pocket square out of his suit jacket and began mopping the splattered ink from his face. The pocket square was silk, was designed to match this suit perfectly, and would be utterly ruined after this but sometimes appearance was more important than appearances, especially in maintaining some semblance of dignity after your _pen_ had just _exploded_ in your _face_. Besides, the suit itself was all but a write-off at this point anyways seeing as the pen, upon exploding, hadn't been very discriminatory: his hair, suit, desk, and paperwork had all suffered under the barrage.

“I suppose you know something about this,” Napoleon remarked conversationally.

Illya just shrugged, but there was a definite smirk creeping around the corners of his mouth. “I couldn't say. Perhaps you gripped too tightly?”

“Too tight– ? _Peril_. It _exploded_. You may have noticed? It was a little loud and your head is only about two feet away and it _literally exploded_. My fingers are still tingling. My hair feels singed. My _eyes_ feel singed.” The entire room smelt smoky – _he_  smelt smoky, and for that matter he really hoped it was only ink on his suit and he wasn't, in fact, on fire anywhere.

Another shrug, but it was very definitely a smirk now. “ _Quite_ tightly, then.”

Napoleon was just beginning to wonder if he should be worried about whether any of the other office supplies was booby trapped by _actual literal explosives_ when the door was swung open by Gaby carrying a tottering stack of paper.

“I told you,” she was saying even before she'd gotten through the door, “that we should have just shoved that asshole into the lake instead of keeping him and trying to go through Solo's contacts. Not only was he trying to stare down my dress the entire evening but using CIA resources is _so_ much paperw– _what_ have you done to your face?”

“Would it be remiss of me to return the sentiment, Miss Teller?” asked Napoleon snidely.

“It wouldn't be if I looked like I'd just tried to kiss a freshly paved road. What in the world are you two– oh. Oh no, you didn't.”

Her gaze had fallen down the shattered remains of the sabotaged bomb pen. Illya, meanwhile, was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed and a broad grin on his face now, not even bothering to disguise it. That was the face of a man who'd just seen one good show and was preparing for another.

“Be careful,” Napoleon warned her, “I think Peril's feeling homesick without a government that tries to kill you at any given hour of the day. He's planting bombs now.”

Illya huffed and Gaby just _frowned_.

“Where did you get that pen?” she demanded.

“What? I'm the one getting in trouble? It's my pen! And it exploded! I'm covered in ink and nearly had my fingers blown off!”

Unfortunately Gaby had worked long enough with Napoleon by this point that if there ever was a time his cajoling could have worked on her it was long passed; she continued to frown, with the distinct impression of someone with her arms folded angrily, if it weren't for the fact she was still holding a stack of documents.

Napoleon considered the remains of the pen and wracked his brain.

“Alright,” he concede, “it _might_ have been on of the pen's I nicked off Waverly. I honestly can't tell at this point on account of most of it being _on my face_. Are you saying Waverly's the one's planting bombs? Seems a little counterintuitive, doing so in his own office, unless he's hoping to collect on insurance.”

“Perhaps he is just sick of loud-mouthed Americans who click their pens while others are working,” Illya suggested helpfully.

Gaby snorted, and then burst out in full, ringing peals of laughter. “You _didn't_! Oh, Napoleon.” Turning to Illya, she said, “I'd actually made it for you, you know, before Napoleon went a ruined it. I'd just wanted to show it off to Waverly first, to see what he thought – he'd stuck it in his pen holder though, to look at later.”

“Wait. You're saying you intended to blow _Illya_ up, and I was just unlucky enough to pickpocket your bomb? Why a bomb? Why a _pen?_ ”

“We went to see American film,” Illya interjected, “about British spy. Absolute drivel, it was a horrible movie, completely ridiculous.”

“But in the movie they gave the spy a pen,” Gaby added with an enormous, shameless grin. “A pen that explodes when you click it.”

“Like I said: ridiculous,” said Illya.

 _He enjoyed it,_ Gaby mouthed not at all subtly at Napoleon, who could do nothing but sit with a faceful of drying ink and listen to this exchange.

“Anyways, Illya said that an exploding pen was a stupid idea that no self-respecting spy would ever carry, and I told him that if he could he would definitely have one because who _wouldn't_ want to carry an exploding pen, so I popped down to Engineering and tried to figure it out to make one.”

“It did not work as well as in film,” Illya noted.

“You're welcome for that, by the way,” Gaby added. “Or else you'd both be _dead_. Anyways, it turns out trying to get enough explosives to do any real damage in something as small as a pen – and then trying to figure out how to make it explode in four seconds after three clicks – is a lot harder than you'd expect. Honestly, I hadn't even considered what would happen to the ink...”

“I can tell you what happens to the ink,” said Napoleon dryly. Or, as the case may be, wetly.

“He has not _stopped_ talking about the ink,” said Illya.

Chuckling, Gaby just shook her head and took the liberty to dump her stack of papers onto Illya's desk – away from the sticky, black fallout on Napoleon's.

“I can't believe all it took was an evening alone for you two to start plotting against me,” Napoleon grumbled, looking miserably down at his ruined pocket square.

Illya reached over and gave Napoleon's arm - a spot he could find that wasn't covered in ink - a reassuring pat.  “There, there, Cowboy.  I didn't even know about pen; there was no plot. You do not need us to get into trouble, you find plenty of it all of your own design.”

“Yes, let that be a lesson to you about taking what isn't yours, Napoleon,” said Gaby in a singsong voice, as if a measly exploding pen could drive home the lesson being caught and blackmailed by the CIA couldn't. Though then again Napoleon liked his eyebrows, so maybe it would at least be prudent to hold off in a building full of spies and, evidently, mad scientists.

“I think the real lesson is to never let either of you go to a James Bond film unattended,” Napoleon decided instead as he pushed back from his desk. “Now if you'll excuse me you two can deal with the paperwork as I believe I shall require a mirror and some soap.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so as far as I know the exploding pen actually comes from GoldenEye which comes out decades after this story would have taken place but, come on, I had to do the fake-spy-exploding-pen gag, I HAD to. So either pretend that it came out earlier in the timeline or that From Russia With Love had cooler gadgets since that's the movie they'd have feasibly been able to see in theatres.  
> Also, I can't help but headcanon that Illya has a secret soft spot for really trashy spy films even if he'll grouch about them from start to finish. On Napoleon's recommendation he read Casino Royale, hated it, informed Napoleon of such, and the proceeded to inform Napoleon how much he hates each and every Fleming book as he finishes them.


End file.
